Movie Preview: March 2019

It's been a miserable start to the box office year in 2019. After January could only muster in $812 million, the lowest January total since 2011, February tanked even harder, earning just $623 million, the worst February since 2013 and second worse since 2002. The month fell nearly 40 percent from last February, which saw "Black Panther" boost the month to the first ever $1 billion February. With the holiday holdovers in the rear view mirror, the new releases just haven't been able to connect. Expected hits like "The LEGO Movie 2" and "Happy Death Day 2U" completely failed while "Alita: Battle Angel," "What Men Want," "Isn't It Romantic" and "Cold Pursuit" delivered only the mid-range results that were expected from them. "LEGO 2" led the month, but with only $85 in the bank domestically, whereas "LEGO Batman" had $135 million at this point in its run while the original "LEGO Movie" had $192 million through its first month. Coming in second place this month was "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World," despite only being in theaters for seven days, taking in an impressive $67 million first week total. Despite this disappointing start to the year, March is looking to get 2019 on track with several big titles scheduled, so let's dive in and explore what's on the table!

March 1st - 3rd -

This first weekend of March is already underway, giving us a good idea of what is going to happen. The expected result is for "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World" to repeat at top with around $30 million. However, if it follows the same trajectory as "How to Train Your Dragon 2," which was more frontloaded than expected, its weekend total will be $27.5 million, which theoretically could make for a close race with the weekend's biggest new arrival, Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral. Tyler Perry has a pretty loyal fan base when it comes to his films as his 19 movies average an opening weekend total of $21.4 million. That average goes even higher when you look at his Madea movies as the eight of them average an opening weekend total of $26.1 million. While it may not be fair to expect "A Madea Family Funeral" to hit towards the higher end of the Madea range, this is being advertised as the final Madea movie. Whether or not that's true is a different story, but the claim that it is could give the movie an extra boost this weekend, perhaps getting it close to that $26.1 million average, which would give it a solid second place finish. It's not completely out of the question for it to sneak in a weekend win, but runner-up seems most likely.

Looking to come in a bit further down the charts is the new thriller Greta. This stars Chloe Grace Moretz as a young woman new to New York who finds that someone left a purse on the Subway, so she rather generously figures out who the owner is and returns it. Said owner is a middle-aged lady played by Isabelle Huppert who Moretz befriends because she seems nice at first, but ends up being a lot more crazy than was initially expected. The absolute best case scenario if audiences really latch onto "Greta" would be comparing this to last September's "A Simple Favor," which opened to $16 million, or perhaps fellow stalker thriller from a few years ago in "The Boy Next Door," which opened to $14.9 million in early 2016. "Greta" will be playing in about 2,400 theaters this weekend, which leaves it open to surprise. However, with the reaction only being somewhat positive and the buzz not being super loud, general audiences might be looking to save their money for next weekend's big release instead of running out to see "Greta," making some more recent horror/thrillers a possible comparison with "The Possession of Hannah Grace" ($6.4 million) in late November, "Miss Bala" ($6.8 million) on February 1, and "The Prodigy" ($5.9 million) on February 8.

March 8th - 10th-

Releasing on International Women's Day (March 8) comes the first major female-led superhero film from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and that, of course, is Captain Marvel. The name Captain Marvel has a bit of a confusing history with several different characters in the comics assuming that title from both DC and Marvel over the years, with DC's Billy Batson being the original to take on the name in 1939, being then owned by Fawcett Comics. However, Fawcett stopped publishing in 1953 due to copyright infringements from DC, claiming he was a copy of Superman. DC eventually gained the rights to the character and rebranded him as Shazam in 1972 due to trademark conflicts with Marvel, who also had a character named Captain Marvel by then. Billy Batson's Shazam has his movie coming out next month. Marvel's Captain Marvel has also had several characters take on that title through their history, but in this case it refers to Carol Danvers, who was previously known as Ms. Marvel, but took on the title of Captain Marvel in July 2012. Got all that down? In short, in 2019 Billy Batson = Shazam and Carol Danvers = Captain Marvel. Academy Award winning actress Brie Larson steps into the role for Marvel after winning best actress for "Room" in 2016.

As far as the box office potential for "Captain Marvel," your typical origin story for the MCU has opened to $80-90 million. Doctor Strange took in $85 million in 2016 while "The Guardians of the Galaxy" opened to $94 million in 2014. On the low end of the spectrum, "Ant-Man" opened to $57 million in 2015, but held exceptionally strong after great word of mouth. However, "Captain Marvel" is not going to be your typical original story. First off, it will very likely get a strong boost due to the social relevancy of being Marvel's first major female-led superhero movie. I say "major" because technically The Wasp officially took that title last year with "Ant-Man and the Wasp," but she shared the title and the movie with Ant-Man. Similar social relevancy led last year's "Black Panther" to open to $202 million. While not expected to go that high, early tracking in some reports have "Captain Marvel" opening as high as $150-175 million. An opening at on par with 2017's "Wonder Woman" ($103 million) seems to be on the low end of what will happen. The other reason this is set to have a huge opening is the fact that Captain Marvel was teased at the end of "Avengers: Infinity War," suggesting that she will be key in "Avengers: Endgame" next month, which makes this movie more of a must see in theaters for those wanting to be fully caught up before "Endgame."

March 15 - 17th-

If "Captain Marvel" ends up hitting the high end of pre-release expectations, that would lead the movie to a second weekend total of around $70 million when looking at comparable MCU titles. Otherwise it's look at a $40-60 million second weekend. Competing with it will be two new releases, both of which might struggle to hit $10 million. We'll start with Five Feet Apart, a teen romance drama where both have Cystic Fibrosis, a genetic disorder that mostly effects the lungs. The guidelines with CF patients is that they have to stay six feet apart from other people who have CF or else it could be harmful to them. But the couple in this movie, played by Cole Sprouse and Haley Lu Richardson, decide they want to strive to live a little instead of having the disease control their life, so in their relationship, they set their own rule of five feet apart. The poster child for this genre is "The Fault in Our Stars," which opened to $48 million in Summer 2014. The two movies are especially comparable as both are about sick lovers. However, a realistic comparison for "Five Feet Apart" has this going route of "Love, Simon" and "Everything, Everything" ($11.7 million for both). There's also the path of "Midnight Sun ($4 million) and "Before I Fall" ($4.7 million), but there's probably enough buzz here to get this to the former as reaction from the target audience seems positive.

The other movie that will be opening this weekend is the animated movie Wonder Park. Paramount has been very aggressive in advertising this film as the initial teaser debuted all the way back in July and they've been fairly persistent with it ever since. They even purchased a pre-game Super Bowl spot. But has the push been worth it? That's debatable. Generally speaking, movies without a major animation studio behind them, like Pixar, Disney, or Illumination, have a hard time breaking out. And "Wonder Park" is awkwardly stuck on the schedule between "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World," which still should be doing fairly well at this point, and Disney's live-action "Dumbo" at the end of March. Are families going to take an extra trip to see a more obscure movie about a theme park that doesn't have a studio they trust behind it? Perhaps not. As far as the premise goes, this is about a young girl who has dreamed of having a magical theme park and is fortunate enough to see it come to life. It seems like a movie that could connect well with the younger audience with themes of dreaming and imagination, but the issue will be getting parents to pay for the tickets. Last March Paramount could only get "Sherlock Gnomes" to open to $10.6 million and there's plenty of other examples of smaller animated films opening between $5-10 million.

March 22nd - 24th-

There's only one new release this weekend, but it's a huge one with Jordan Peele's Us. If we're talking about a cultural phenomenon, it almost doesn't get any bigger than "Get Out," which immediately skyrocketed Jordan Peele from well-respected comedy sketch artist to one of the most beloved and trusted filmmakers of our day. Talk about a debut outing. Not only was it a huge box office success, earning $176 million domestically after a $33 million opening, but it scored a 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and went onto get nominated for four Oscars. And they were huge Oscars in best picture, best director, best lead actor and best original screenplay, which is nearly unheard of for a horror film. Jordan Peele even won the award for best original screenplay and nearly walked home with best picture. Of course that means we've all been champing at the bit for his next movie, which will be "Us." In addition to being from Jordan Peele, the trailers for this movie have done a great job of terrifying people as it showcases a family that is being haunted by mysterious figures that look and think exactly like them. Horror has been on a role lately and this is sure to continue. Matching the $33 million opening of "Get Out" seems like the absolute low bar as this could soar a lot higher.

March 29th - 31st- 

The Disney brigade will be in full force in 2019. They already have "Captain Marvel" this month and "Avengers: Endgame" next month. But sandwiched in between those two is their latest live action reimagining, that of Dumbo. Even though many people might be rolling their eyes at the idea of Disney remaking... EVERYTHING, Disney has been paying attention to the box office receipts rather than internet reaction. On those terms, they see "The Jungle Book" making $966 million worldwide in 2016 and "Beauty and the Beast" making $1.26 billion worldwide and they think, why stop? That's why we have the big trifecta of "Dumbo," "Aladdin" and "The Lion King" this year, with many more to come if these three are successful. "Mulan" won't be too far afterwards in March 2020. Now "Dumbo" isn't as big of an IP as "Aladdin" and "The Lion King," so the expectations aren't quite as high, but it does have Tim Burton on board as director and he's the one who started this whole trend with his 2010 "Alice in Wonderland" movie. For box office comparisons, it might be worth going back a few years to look at the opening weekends of "Cinderella" ($67.8 million) and "Maleficent" ($69.4 million). Those numbers could be a bit optimistic, but reaction to the trailers so far have been good. The biggest problem might come in Disney overbooking themselves.

The final wide release this month is the Pure Flix film Unplanned. Pure Flix is a company that distributes low-budget Christian films. They've put out 16 films since 2015 and those films have averaged a domestic total of $7.4 million. The average opening weekend total for the films that have had at least a moderate opening is $2.6 million, so we're not looking at a huge opening here. "Unplanned" is an anti-abortion film about Abby Johnson, one of the youngest Planned Parenthood clinic directors in the United States. The movie is the true story of how she was asked to assist in an ultrasound-guided abortion at 13 weeks, which then caused her to resign and become pro-life activist. The controversy surrounding this film is that the MPAA slapped it with an R-rating, a first for a Pure Flix film, for "some disturbing/bloody images." In other words, the showed scenes of abortion. The directors of the film were upset at this, claiming the MPAA allows scenes of graphic sex, violence, degradation, murder and mayhem to be PG-13, while them showing an abortion gets an R. Fair or foul? You decide. Despite the complaints, they won't be appealing. The exact total of this film will be determined by the exact theater count. Their latest film, "Indivisible," opened in 830 theaters to $1.5 million.